Pablo Picasso

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Pablo Picasso
By Phylicia Appling
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Early Years

• Pablo Picasso was born on October 25, 1881 in
  Malaga, Spain.
• He started painting and drawing at a very young
  age
• Picassos father José Ruiz y Blasco was also a
  painter himself and recognized Pablos talent at
  his young age.

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Picasso's first painting at age 8, Picador (1889).
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• Pablos father taught him the basics of formal
  and academic art training.
• It involved figure drawing and painting in oil.
• Picasso attended many art schools during his
  childhood, many those of where his father taught
• He never finished his studies at the Academy of
  Arts in Madrid, dropping out after only a year

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• In the early years of the twentieth century,
  Picasso, still a struggling youth, began a long
  term relationship with Fernande Olivier. It is
  she who appears in many of the Rose period
  paintings. After garnering fame and some fortune,
  Picasso left Olivier for Marcelle Humbert, whom
  Picasso called Eva. Picasso included declarations
  of his love for Eva in many Cubist works. Humbert
  was diagnosed with cancer and during her rapid
  deterioration, Picasso administered to her every
  need, making daily trips across Paris to visit
  her in the hospital.

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• In 1918, Picasso married Olga Khoklova, a
  ballerina with Sergei Diaghilev's troupe, for
  whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Parade, in
  Rome. Khoklova introduced Picasso to high
  society, formal dinner parties, and all the
  social niceties attendant on the life of the rich
  in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo, who
  would grow up to be a dissolute motorcycle racer
  and chauffeur to his father.

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Rose Period

• In 1905-6, Picasso's palette began to lighten
  considerably, bringing in a distinctive beige or
  "rose" tone. The subject matter also is less
  depressing. Here are the first appearances by the
  circus performers and clowns that will populate
  Picasso's paintings at various stages through the
  rest of his long career.

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Girl in Chemise 1905
Two Youths 1905
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Blue Period

• Shortly after moving to Paris from Barcelona,
  Picasso began to produce works that were suffused
  in blue. This particular pigment is effective in
  conveying a sombre tone. The psychological
  trigger for these depressing paintings was the
  suicide of Picasso's friend Casagemas. The Blue
  Period work is quite sentimental, but we must
  keep in mind that Picasso was still in his late
  teens, away from home for the first time, and
  living in very poor conditions.

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The Tragedy 1903
Le Gourmet 1901
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Cubism Period

• In late 1906, Picasso started to paint in a truly
  revolutionary manner. Inspired by Cézanne's
  flattened depiction of space, and working
  alongside his friend Georges Braque, he began to
  express space in strongly geometrical terms.
  These initial efforts at developing this almost
  sculptural sense of space in painting are the
  beginnings of Cubism

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Self Portrait with Palette 1906
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Violin Guitar
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Between the Wars

• The collaboration between Picasso and Braque was
  ended by the First World War. After the war,
  Picasso, reflecting society's disillusionment and
  shock with the technological horrors of the war,
  reverted to a Classicist mode of representation.
  At the same time, however, he was continuing to
  push Cubism into new paths. During the '30s
  Picasso became tangentially connected with the
  Surrealist movement. Although Andre Breton tried
  to recruit Picasso, he remained ultimately aloof
  from any school of art throughout his career

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Picasso the Legend

• By the late '30s, Picasso was the most famous
  artist in the world. He was called upon to depict
  the brutality of fascist aggression in the
  Spanish Civil War with his monumental "Guernica".
  
• Many other paintings from this period reflect the
  horror of war, but there is a consistent
  depiction of personal interest as well. The women
  in Picasso's life had a major impact on his
  artistic production, and some of the best
  examples are from this period.

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Picassos Late Works

• In the last two decades of his long career,
  Picasso produced more work than at any other time
  of his life. During this period, some works are
  not only dated by month and day, but with a
  numeral (I, II, III, etc.) indicating multiple
  works created that single day!
• This late period tends to be overlooked, but
  contains some of the finest of Picasso's
  paintings. Some critics maintain Picasso was
  creatively lazy at this point, but a close look
  at the work is very rewarding. He had achieved a
  level of effortless artistic expression that, I
  believe, has still not been fully appreciated
  after more than 25 years.
• Regardless of your position on Picasso's personal
  and artistic life, each of us can, in view of our
  own mortality, be awed by his final
  self-portrait.

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• Throughout Picasso's lifetime, his work was
  exhibited on countless occasions. Most unusual,
  however, was the 1971 exhibition at the Louvre,
  in Paris, honoring him on his 90th birthday
  until then, living artists had not been shown
  there. In 1980 a major retrospective showing of
  his work was held at the Museum of Modern Art in
  New York City. Picasso died in his villa
  Notre-Dame-de-Vie near Mougins on April 8, 1973.

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Bibliography

• Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1994 and Encarta 1999.
• The Museum of Modern Art. Pablo Picasso, a
  retrospective. Ed. William Rubin, chronology by
  Jane Fluegel. New York. 1980. ISBN 0-87070-519-9
• Mallen, Enrique. The Visual Grammar of Pablo
  Picasso. Berkeley Insights in Linguistics
  Semiotics Series. Berlin Peter Lang. 2003.